For large scale common carriers, it is important to maintain accurate information regarding the location of various assets shipped from a variety of origins to a variety of destinations. The various assets often undergo multiple sort procedures, and are moved from one transportation vehicle to another as each asset moves closer to its intended destination.
The sort procedures often require many employees to sort assets arriving in several vehicles, and these assets may be placed in several locations corresponding to their next stop before reaching an intended destination. The employees may receive some indication of the proper sort location for each asset, such as text printed on each asset or instructions scrolling across a video screen (as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/204,657, incorporated herein in its entirety). The employee may then place the asset in the proper sort location after receiving the sort location indicator. In various circumstances, the employee may manually identify the location at which the asset is placed, and thereby maintain a record of the location of the asset throughout the shipping process.
However, historical concepts for identifying the location of an asset have been cumbersome, requiring sort employees to individually identify the sort location for each of a plurality of assets being sorted. For example, a sort employee may be required to scan indicia on each asset (e.g., a bar code) and subsequently scan a similar indicia on the sort location in order to associate the asset with the sort location. Alternatively, the sort employee may be required to first scan indicia on a sort location, and then scan a similar indicia on each of one or more assets to be associated with the single sort location. Regardless of the scan order (e.g., asset first or sort location first), the sort employee is required to scan a new sort location indicia each time an asset is to be sorted to a second sort location. Requiring employees to scan multiple indicia significantly reduces sorting efficiency and increases the possibility of employee error. Should an employee fail to scan the proper sort location indicia before placing an asset at a sort location, the asset location may be improperly stored, and such asset may be transported to an incorrect destination. Such events may additionally result in improper reporting from data storage devices.
Such historical systems and methods for maintaining accurate asset location information for a plurality of sorted assets are thus expensive to implement and do not eliminate possible sort errors. Thus, a need exists for an improved system and method for maintaining accurate records of the location of an asset in a sort process.